Three months in. I’ve gained about eighty pounds and aged a hundred more years. As I noted in the newsletter yesterday, I’m trying to check out of the news scroll as much as I can. The news from America is obviously particularly awful right now. (And, correct, “the UK is not innocent.”) As an old white guy from five thousand miles away, any comment I share is, frankly, probably in bad taste and a lot less useful than quietly donating and carefully checking in with people. My distant voice, unfairly charged as it is with privilege and advantage and reach, is not the voice that needs to be heard right now.
The death figures here will go up tomorrow, because Monday’s number is always under-reported. Lockdown has eased just a tiny bit — not enough to make any difference to me — and with the R number still hovering under 1, will probably not stay in that position for long. I walked out to pick up something from the corner shop earlier, and the streets around here seem to be returning to normal. The only other masked people I saw were a young Indian couple, walking down the street with their masked little boy in a pushchair. I smiled, and then remembered to nod and lift my shades too, because smiles tend not to transmit through masks unless you’re looking for it and have eyes to read.
My brain, at this point, is pretty much useless, and everything is ten times harder than it used to be. But, over the last few days, I’ve been hearing local stories of people getting sectioned, suicide attempts and the like. So I’m going to quit whining and log out of everything on the internet and get on with my shit.
Probably another six weeks of this to go. Time to open the last bottle of wine.